South Africa and Australia join forces to discover ORCs around galaxies far, far away.
Unexplained odd radio circles in the sky are detected by the ASKAP and MeerKAT radio telescopes. The Square Kilometre Array Telescope has been imagined, planned and designed by radio astronomers for over three decades. This effort has led to new technologies and a generation of scientific instruments that are able to detect phenomena in the universe…
Talking Science in Indigenous Languages
This is the title of a presentation I gave for SciFest, one of the largest science festivals in South Africa. In the era of the pandemic, SciFest has gone on to organise regular talks online, so thank you for the invitation. https://youtu.be/sbOXCBAJWxE
Academics and online presence
Most academics excel at their area of expertise, but not everyone knows how to publicise themselves. I have put together a small website that hopefully will help academics create a simple webpage to showcase their work in all its diversity – research, teaching, supervising, outreach, and more. It also gives links to resources on where and…
Tolerance ranges
In today’s cancer post, I’m going to talk about how treatment affects tolerance ranges. It is very simple, it makes them smaller, narrower. Here are examples of this (and please bear with me, it’s just for info that I’m sharing this, not for pity!): Temperature: I get cold as soon as it gets cool, but I…
A little tale of kindness
This happened to me a few days ago. I had been to hospital to fetch my chemotherapy drugs and I had to fill up my car. I drove in to the petrol station and stopped at one of the pumps. A petrol attendant came to me and asked what I needed. “Fill it up please, unleaded.”…
Therapy
Oh yes, I go for therapy, and it has been great. There is no denying that even with the best support network and loved ones around, being the one with the cancer in this turmoil can be quite lonely. I started therapy a few months before I got diagnosed actually. I was unwell and I was…
Living with hand foot syndrome
I am on chemo for life. The chemotherapy I am taking is called Capecitabine. It is quite manageable compared to others, in the sense that it is oral, so can be taken at home, and I tolerate it well. I am not crippled by nausea and thus, this is the perfect maintenance treatment giving me a…
Large fireball illuminates Southern African skies
On the evening of August 24, a bright object traveling fast in the upper atmosphere had thousands of people mesmerised. It was spotted by many in the Gauteng province of South Africa but was visible further North into Limpopo and Zimbabwe. At first we didn’t know what it was. https://twitter.com/tWeatherSA/status/1430370778248323074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1430370778248323074%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fastronomy2024.org%2Flarge-fireball-illuminates-south-african-skies%2F A usual shooting star is a rock…
Continue Reading Large fireball illuminates Southern African skies
The birth of a rainbow
A rainbow is one of the most beautiful natural phenomena. It never ceases to capture the imagination, symbolising unity and diversity, spanning the range of colours that the human eye can see. It has been the subject of myths and legends, in part because its end is not reachable. Until now. I have captured the birth…